For the first time, researchers have collected evidence to put together a picture of the shadowy network of organisations that are connected to the RSS – and the result is disturbing. They unearthed a network of 2500 organisations, that draw ideological, organisational and often financial sustenance from the Sangh. Of these 2500 organisations, 2240 are based in India while the rest are spread over 39 countries. They also developed a mapping of how these outfits are linked to each other, revealing the multi-layered connections to the parent RSS. It is through this vast network of social service or religious-cultural organisations that the RSS transmits its toxic ideology of Hindutva.

The six-year long exercise of piecing together this picture was carried out by researchers from the Paris based academic institution CERI-SciencesPo and Delhi based magazine The Caravan. An interactive map showing the locations and other details of each organisation in the network is available on the Caravan website. It includes a network mapping showing the linkages of these organisations with each other. Details of the methodology and an accompanying essay by the lead author Felix Pal is also available online.

Zooming in on India in the map, one can make out which states have how many of these RSS associates. Some of the states with large number of such outfits are: Uttar Pradesh – 280; Maharashtra – 259; Karnataka - 174; Gujarat - 136; Kerala – 212; Madhya Pradesh – 73; West Bengal – 75; Tamil Nadu – 76. Jammu & Kashmir has 55 such organisations while the eight states of North-East together have 75 with Assam alone hosting 44 of them. These numbers probably represent historical legacy – as in UP or Maharashtra or the North-East where the RSS has been active for decades, or they show more recent priorities, as in W.Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

At the international level, broadly speaking, the RSS network is spread amongst the diaspora, both historical and recent. According to The Caravan research, for example, most of the small countries with historical immigrant Hindu populations like in the Caribbean or Mauritius or Fiji, or in South-East Asia have RSS fronts active in the Hindu communities, though their scale or influence cannot be judged from this data. But the biggest concentration of RSS networked outfits can be found in the US (107) followed by Australia (34) and the UK (26). The network mapping gives an indication that these foreign based RSS affiliates are often sources of funding for India based affiliates. For example, India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) is a tax-exempt, non-profit organisation based in Maryland, US. It is a key source of funding to various RSS affiliates in India. The linkage map shows it is connected to at least 200 organisations which include such giants as Sewa Bharti, ABVP, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram but also a phalanx of smaller NGO-type outfits spread across the country. Similarly, Support a Child USA is another outfit potentially providing funding to RSS supported organisations in India. It is directly affiliated to Vishwa Hindu Parishad USA. A few international organisations are functioning in several countries. One of them is Overseas Friends of BJP which has chapters in several prominent countries. Similarly, Vishwa Hindu Parishad has direct subsidiaries in various countries. RSS itself has an overseas front called Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh with branches in most of the countries where affiliates are working.

Most of the foreign based RSS affiliates serve as community organisations, observing religious festivals, running some community services and hosting visiting leaders from India. Some of them, like the ones mentioned earlier, primarily undertake fund collection from donors in the country they are based in and channel it to various outfits in India.

What Do These India-Based Outfits Do?

These organisations reveal a bewildering array of issues that they engage with – providing services, education, health, culture, economic, defence/security, religious activities, labour, media, international affairs, etc. Then, there are many organisations based on professions – traders, doctors, advocates, ex-servicemen, teachers, and so on. They range from small NGOs to religious and charitable trusts, cooperatives, societies or just unregistered bodies of individuals. Through these innocuous activities they attract needy people towards the RSS.

The RSS publicly recognises only 32 affiliates or, as they put it, ‘Sangh-inspired’ organisations. These include all the big organisations like the BJP, VHP, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, Vidya Bharti, Sewa Bharti, ABVP, etc. There are regular coordination meetings with these, and their office bearers are members of the top consultative body of the RSS called the Akhil Bhartiya Pratinidhi Sabha (all India representatives’ conference).

But the remaining over 2000 outfits are hardly ever referred to officially except in generic terms, as ‘like-minded organisations’ or even ‘sajjan samaj’ (noble persons community). The connection or link with the mother organisation is through RSS members (swayamsevaks) or pracharaks (RSS wholetime workers). The primary objective of these organisations is to carry forward the core ideological messages of the RSS to the people it influences. These core ideas include: the awakening of Hindu society and inculcating its supremacy through learning about its “glorious past”; the infusion and practice of various Sanatan derived rituals, customs, observances and occasions; the cultivation of awareness about “threats and dangers” facing the Hindu society; and ultimately, working towards the establishment of Hindu Rashtra.

Obviously, these core messages need to be mediated and distilled to suit the target population each organisation is working with. For example, Vidya Bharti runs over 15,000 formal recognized schools, about 4000 Ekal Shiksha Kendras (informal single teacher centers) in tribal areas, about 5000 Sanskar Kendras in poor urban localities and 60 colleges. In all of these, ‘moral and cultural education’ is a key part – that being the name given to the Hindutva ideology. Incidentally, these schools are not counted in the RSS network of The Caravan. The Ekal Shiksha Kendras overlap with the activities of another big RSS-inspired organization, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA), working in tribal areas. VKA itself has dozens of affiliates to suit the local conditions – for instance, it has different fronts in each of the North-Eastern states, and separate ones in the central Indian tribal areas. Local beliefs and customs are adopted by these fronts for better acceptability among the tribals. Professional organisations too follow a similar modus operandi of aligning with the RSS and BJP ideological lines on various issues while lobbying for its members’ interests.

The overlapping and federating style of work is a clear characteristic, mostly hidden from the public eye. Felix Pal, the lead author of the research points out in his essay accompanying the map and data, that in each of the 46 ‘prants’ (provinces) that RSS has, there are “its own iterations of key Sangh affiliates: Vidya Bharati becomes the Sarvhitkari Shiksha Samiti in Punjab; Sewa Bharati becomes the Hindu Seva Pratishthana in Karnataka; and Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram becomes the Vanvasi Kalyan Kendra in Jharkhand”.

Felix Pal gives the example of a set of 20 organisations in Jammu that are all run from a single complex, located in the Ved Mandir. The land was granted by the Dogra ruler in 1916 to a person for building a Vedic temple. In 1964, the Ved Mandir Committee was registered. Pal writes that somewhere down the line it was taken over by the RSS. Among the organisations that run from there are – a home for the aged and infirm, a cow shelter, a place of worship, a centre for natural treatments of diseases, an NGO for Kargil War veterans, a hostel in Katra, orphanages for boys and girls, a school, a vocational training centre, a homeopathic dispensary, a hospital, a lodge for pilgrims, a school for studying the Vedas and offices of half a dozen RSS affiliated organisations. All four office bearers of the Ved Mandir Balniketan are RSS people, and they are leaders of multiple other RSS affiliates of the region. In fact, the president is the sanghchalak (chief) of RSS’ Jammu prant. Some of the entities functioning from the temple complex have received funds from IDRF and Sewa International based in US and Canada respectively. The Jammu temple complex is a microcosm of the whole RSS network. So much so that the RSS Sarsanghchalak (supremo) always stays there when he visits the region.

Tip of Iceberg

The researchers have admitted that this is not the full picture of the RSS network. Most of their work is based on online research and obviously, there are vast numbers of organisations that do not yield their details through that. Moreover, the research has left out some aspects deliberately like affiliated schools which are so large in number that they might ‘crowd out’ other organisations. This of course doesn’t mean that the schools and balwadis and cultural centres etc. are no less important for the RSS. In fact, they are perhaps the most ‘successful’ of RSS attempts to mould people in their regressive ideology.

Under Modi’s eleven years of rule, there has been widespread extension of government support – read funding – for various RSS activities like workshops for character building, seminars and conferences for cultural awakening or ancient science, etc. In the process, various outfits have sprung up or existing ones have received a boost for their activities. This process is ongoing and may not be reflected in the database. Another type of organisations that have received a fillip in the Modi era are various militant Hindutva outfits who are undertaking ‘cow-protection’ activities or organising of festivals and other such activities. These may not be having a stable organisational structure and may evolve into something more permanent in the fullness of time. These also largely do not figure in the database.

Another category of organisations are the new media-based networks – YouTube channels, Whatsapp groups and channels, etc. This is a grey area in organisational terms but there can be no doubt that there are thousands of such networks actively propagating the Sangh ideology and being managed by Sangh members. These too hardly figure in this database.

And, finally, as the researchers themselves emphasise, the database is of only the RSS network not of all Hindutva related organisations. It is possible that with the pre-eminent position of having a government headed by a RSS pracharak, RSS affiliates will dominate over all others of similar ideology but different organisational origins. But as of now, many such outfits will not figure in the database.

The Battle is On

It is necessary to stress that despite this gigantic network – though diffuse and overlapping – the penetration of RSS’ ideology and more importantly its organisational grip is unevenly spread across the country with vast swathes that are only cursorily touched by them. RSS influence cannot be judged by either the number of organisations that they float or even by the vote share of BJP. People associated with organisations may be drawn to it for a multitude of reasons and cannot be counted as RSS followers. The overlapping of organisations also represents overlapping bases of influence. Similarly, votes received by the BJP vary greatly between areas and regions, and even from one election to another. The RSS is riding piggyback on its frontal organisations – especially the BJP in the current era – to achieve what it couldn’t do in a century. How much it will succeed will depend on how much it is challenged by secular and democratic forces, which still represent a majority of India’s population.